Tom Doherty

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Tom Doherty

As a Partner at Mercury and a former advisor to New York Governor George Pataki with over 20 years of public service at the state and local level, Tom is a frequent guest on Richard French Live and a valuable political insider.

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It seems like yesterday that I was in Parkersburg, West Virginia. A bunch of friends from the University of Charleston had driven a few hours to hear President Ronald Reagan speak. This was the fall of 1984 and Reagan was our guy and we knew the Republican Party was where we wanted to be. The GOP was the Party of big ideas, less government interference and fighting Communism at every turn. Most important to me was the fact that Reagan made me feel like no matter what problems we confronted Americans always had the ability, with a smile on our face, to make tomorrow better.

This coming January I'll turn 50. The first memory I have of tragedy in America was the shooting of Martin Luther King in April of 1968. At age 5 you only remember that something really bad happened. Only a few months later Robert Kennedy also was assassinated. The only reason this moment stuck with me a little more vividly was the train which carried the body of the New York Senator. For some reason, the Battle Hymn of the Republic still plays in my head as I think of Senator Kennedy and St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Four years ago Americans had an expectation that we would be more unified today. We are always going to have the far wings of the Democrat and Republican Party’s trying to divide us. But, wasn’t our 1st African American President going to reach out to ALL Americans and find a common ground? Today, we stand more divided than ever. Obama doesn’t even seem personally engaged with his own Congressional Democrats, let alone reaching out to Republicans.